Something else I've noticed...in Super Mario 3D Land, and ESPECIALLY in NSMB2, is that it is becoming easier and easier to collect lives. NSMB2 makes the Green Mushroom Houses a complete joke. Its virtually impossible to hit game over without intentionally trying to. Makes one wonder what the point of having the extra lives is anymore. Even if you do hit game over, you can always continue. At least Mario 64 had gave you a reason to care about lives.

I am using my post from another thread. Seriously though...what is the point in collecting lives anymore in most Mario games. Its become so easy. In Mario 3D Land, they gave you extra coins to replace the score system. NSMB2 allows the collecting of thousands of coins in a single level, and you still get a 1up for every hundred coins. Thoughts anyone? Who likes/dislikes this direction? It kinda takes away the challenge in my opinion. There isn't even a penalty anymore for a game over other than a score reset.

But I have to agree with you. Nintendo hasn't really given us much of a reason to have lives in the past couple of Mario titles as extra lives are just so easy to come by. In NSMB2, I had already 80+ lives before I had gotten to the second world and it may of been a bit less in 3D Land but it's still much more than games before it. Nintendo has made the games was to easy so it's harder for us to die but it's easy for us to gain more lives. I hate it because there's no challenge. I love when a game challenges me but if I'm getting 5-10 lives in a level and the level is easy, there's no challenge at all.

I don't really see the point in game overs in either of those two games. What would the penalty even be? Starting at the very first level of the world, last save point, etc.? When a good portion of the game emphasizing on collecting star coins to unlock new worlds, it'd be pretty ridiculous to have to start at the very beginning after all that collecting. The current save feature makes it harder for there to be any real "penalty".

That being said, I was almost certain that they would get rid of the whole 100 coins = 1 life thing in NSMB simply because you can collect tons of lives just by running through a level. I don't think we'll see a "difficult" Mario side scroller for a very long time.

It's interesting you bring this up because this is a position I've taken for quite some time. Lives are indeed obsolete in many cases. I'm not sure why they still exist. However, I recently played Sonic Generations, which has a lives system. The levels are quite long, but they have checkpoints. Losing a life puts you back at the last checkpoint, while losing all your lives puts you back at the start of the level. This is one of the only cases I can think of in recent memory where they actually had any purpose. Granted it still wasn't much, but it's the difference between "almost worthless" and "totally worthless".

NSMB (only played the first DS game, and Wii, not 2) only ever had one checkpoint in the middle of a level so it'd be extra worthless there. Lives are a holdover from the days of arcades when they wanted people to keep putting quarters in their machines, and the easiest way to do that was to kill them over and over again. Now that we've moved past that there's really no reason for them to exist any more.

I don't mind it, since game overs don't even mean "game over" anymore either and that applies to all games these days, since they all have save functions and having game saves is a good thing. I personally like collecting extra lives. Not that I need to, but I just do so for fun.

Those checkpoints still exist in the newer games Distortion. Well in NSMB2 they do. When you die, you go back to the checkpoint and if you die like 5-8 times(can't remember the exact number), you get an item that makes you invincible unless you fall into a pit. The game is basically set up so you never get the game over no more and doesn't even provide a real challenge. One website said that NSMB2 was gonna be the hardest Mario platform game but they had it completely wrong as it is the easiest. It's easy to get 10 lives in one level if you collect 1,000 coins in one level and it's not like the levels are even design to provide much of a challenge. It's sickening.

If they are making it so you will have more of a challenge to try and fail then succeed then they are making the game wrong imo. Later levels need to have challenges. Not be as easy as the first world.

I kinda disagree on the notion that Super Mario 64 gave you a reason to care about lives. If you did happen to lose all of them then the only penalty is reloading the file with a fresh stock of lives (providing you were saving, which you probably would be doing). Same with Sunshine. That isn't much of a reason to care.

Even if life collecting has become easier in the newer games, I don't think much has really changed in regards to how players perceive lives. For a long time it's been a counter that's been meaningless, though maybe Nintendo should stop pretending and just remove lives altogether. Link gets by just fine with a death counter, for example.

It was more of a nuisance to run out in Mario 64...cause I died a lot when playing through the first couple times, and had to waste time to return to where I was trying to collect that 'one star'. That is why it bugged me then.

I also agree with the 'Invincibility Item' in all the NSMB games and 3D Land. It completely removes the challenge from the game. It only impacts your profile slightly if you show others.

Also...in NSMB2...I've managed nearly 8,000 coins in the first level. That is EIGHTY lives gained.

Bring a gold flower, rush straight to the tower of goobas at the end. Kill them, then rush back to the pipe that shoots you into the sky. Fall immediately, and then kill the stack of goombas again, and repeat till time is nearly out. You get 250 coins each time, and theres a shorter stack in route each time for an additional thirty. It also helps to launch the fireball as far away from the goombas as you can that will hit them.